Yi-Shan-Guan

The most interesting narratives I received were ones where players had befriended these foreign players in spite of the language barrier. In many of these cases, Western and Eastern players had learned to work together to their mutual benefit. For example, in World of Warcraft, a few instance raids now accept known gold farmers given the right looting arrangement (master loot and then random roll) because some gold farmers are recognized as decent players of their class.

Yes, I came across one gold farmer while running an instance within World of Warcraft. I speak a little Chinese, so I was able to communicate and confirm that he was at least Chinese-speaking. He was quite comical, a little dwarf rogue, and he spent the entire time in the instance running from chest to chest, triggering traps that could have been avoided in order to loot the treasure.

Everyone else in our party kept yelling at him, and I told him politely two or three times to stop. Honestly, it didn't bother me. In fact it was amusing to me to be walking along the streets of Stratholme, and suddenly see a fat little dwarf run across the screen, trying to escape death-by-leeches, which had been triggered from the last chest he attempted to open. We talked the entire time we were in the instance, and I had to explain several of my English words to him. I even went as far to ask him if he had friends, and he said they were working on other servers.

He then told me about the exchange rate of gold to currency, and how our server's rate was somewhere around .23 currency for 10 gold. I was more fascinated by him than upset, and I think our friendly interaction led to a smoother instance run.

What flattered me most was that he even gave me a greater mana potion that he stole from one of his looted chests. Granted, they don't sell for nearly as much as the major mana potions, but they do sell reasonably well. I was touched, really. Here was a guy that played a game in order to purchase food for himself, and he was offering to give me something that could contribute to his paycheck. I added him to my friends list because I was curious to know more about him, but I never saw him again. [WoW, F, 21]

Others have found out that it is possible to work with instead of against the gold farmers.

I was trying to level in a popular leveling spot but this area was filled with gold farmers because the monsters dropped a lot of adena (the currency), were easy to kill and had a chance to drop valuable items which could be sold for quite a lot of adena. It was difficult to level and there was one farmer in particular who always tried to steal my monsters and made it even more challenging for me to level.

I was frustrated and threw out a few Chinese swears I knew because I was taking a Chinese class at school. I got a few private messages from some farmers nearby in Chinese and I couldn't understand any of it but then one guy started talking to me in bad English. I found out that he was taking English in China and we made our best attempt to communicate with each other. The farmer would stick by me and help me out which led to the other farmers ignoring me and eventually leaving me alone. [WoW, M, 17]

One time I teamed up with a Horde side gold farmer to kill out 4 Alliance gold farmers that were trying to kill steal us. He tried speaking to me in Chinese, and obviously I know nothing of that, so I was like yeah sure, and he would respond with exclamations etc., as if he thought I actually understood him. We ended up killing the Alliance farmers enough that they left and we were left with the camp. After this incident, that particular farmer was always courteous with me, splitting the spawns with me instead of trying to kill them all. [WoW, M, 18]